In a Rush (Friendship, Rhode Island #2)

by Kate Canterbary

I stared at the ring on her finger as she slept. I’d spent an entire week looking for the right one. Jakobi almost strangled me. Apparently, other people didn’t need to visit eighteen jewelers in four cities to find the right ring. I doubted other people were hoping their fake fiancée actually fell in love with them before the jig was up. Emme shifted a few times, which was only fair because I was about as soft as a concrete basement. Eventually, after some blanket fluffing and several frustrated huffs about the armrest being in her way, she ended up straddling my thigh. We could’ve gotten away with this the same way we got away with a lot of the handsy shit we did—by systematically ignoring it—but something about this was different from kissing for cameras and jaw massages. And that something was the way I started rocking her against my thigh as I rubbed her back. At first I was just trying to shift the position of my irritable hip, but her breath caught and she pressed her face deep into my shoulder when we connected at a certain angle. So I did it again. It was gentle, barely more than a nudge when I stroked my palm up her spine. I kept that up for a few minutes, saying not a fucking word and keeping my gaze on the ceiling. The last thing we needed was some eye contact to make this too real. Then Emme decided to participate. When my hand moved up her back, she rolled her hips to meet the pressure. There was no way she didn’t notice my sharp inhale or the hard flex of my...